Tag: Moon cup

She rides astride the Beast; in her left hand she holds the reins, representing the passion which unites them. In her right she holds aloft the cup, the Holy Grail aflame with love and death. In this cup are mingled the elements of the sacrament of the Aeon.

Aleister Crowley – The Book of Thoth

You’re menstruating and are planning to create Elixir X and use it for magickal purposes, but what about the collecting of it? Although it’s possible to squat over a bowl or similar basin for collection and use your vaginal muscles to press it out of you – I regularly do that over the ritual cup for us to be able to drink the elixir with the ritual wine – it is not something that is easily done for everyone. It might also be too much seed and not enough menstrual blood for it to be a good mix, if you’re not having a rich menstrual flow. Luckily, there is an easier option: the menstrual cup.

But before I go in to the particulars about the menstrual cup, let’s discuss why we are creating Elixir X in the first place. Liber AL vel Legis, Chapter III, verse 24, tells us that “The best blood is of the moon, monthly”. This, of course, is a reference to menstrual blood (the monthly “moon” blood). For me, the reason why this blood is the best, is that it is a way for the woman, that takes part in sexual magick operations, to add her bit of herself to the mixture. This does of course happen at other times as well, with more or less amounts of vaginal fluids added to the created elixir, but the blood is not only a bit more, fluid wise, than the vaginal fluids it is also part of the female reproduction cycle just as the semen is a part the male one.

But wait, I hear you think, isn’t the menstrual blood actually the opposite of reproduction, you can’t get pregnant while menstruating, right? No, that’s actually not true. Semen can live for up to a week and women with short menstrual cycles may drop an egg during that week and get impregnated. It isn’t that common but it can still happen. Apart from that, though, is the question of the old, unfertilised egg, that will leave your body together with the menstrual blood. Let’s look a bit closer at that.

The egg is usually fertilised in one of the ovular tubes and will start growing until it reaches the womb and is ready to attach itself to the uterine lining (which has grown thick with blood to be ready for the egg, the very blood that will eventually leave you as menses). This means that if you want to create life, the time of your period isn’t the optimal time . But as long as your sexual magick operation isn’t meant to create actual physical life (i e to get you pregnant) then whether the egg will be able to grow into a human being or not isn’t a problem (or, actually, is a great thing since you probably don’t want to get pregnant at this moment). Instead, we will let the egg go through the womb unattached and exit it together with the menstrual blood. This means that the blood not only is a part of you but it also contains your half of the means of reproduction, your half of the DNA of a possible human being, in the same way as the semen does. So the menstrual blood can be seen as the female equivalent of the male semen when it comes to creating Elixir X.

All this also means that in order to really add your part to it, you can’t use a contraceptive method that will stop you from ovulating. That means no pills, no hormonal intrauterine devices or similar. Some of these will also stop you from menstruating which, of course, will keep you from getting “the best blood” in the first place. What I recommend is to use a copper-based contraceptive coil. This will let you ovulate and have your period as if your egg wasn’t fertilised since the only thing it does is keeping the fertilised egg from attaching itself to the uterine wall. And if you want to add some extra power to your monthly blood then you can make sure that the egg that comes with it is fertilised (preferably with another magickal operation) while still not getting pregnant. Neat, isn’t it?

Now, let’s get back to the actual collecting of the Elixir X. You are filled with the charged semen from your sexual magick partner and just waiting for your menstrual blood to mix with it. Rather than lying on your back with your legs in the air until you have enough blood in you for the elixir, I suggest that you use a menstrual cup. Insert it after the magickal operation (have it nearby or have your partner fetch it for you if you don’t want to stand up and risk that the semen pours out of you) and then just wait a couple of hours until you bleed enough for there to be a god mixture with the collected semen, which is also held in by the cup, in you. You can then take out the menstrual cup, carefully, so that you won’t spill any of the precious fluids, and use it in any way you want to. It’s very easy to pour it from the cup into the ritual cup for ingestion (rather than squatting and pushing), into a jar for safe keeping until it’s time for baking, or whatever use you have for your elixir. If you want to, you can even give your elixir an extra boost by meditating, doing ritual or magick while it’s collecting within you. Just keep an eye on your amount of flow so that you know how long it will have to stay in to collect enough blood.

Ready for a menstrual cup and unsure of which one to choose? These days there are many brands to choose from and here’s a list of 36 different brands for you to go through and see what fits you. I have a Moon cup (I just couldn’t resist the name) and am very happy with it. A note on fit, though: The recommendation is that you should use the larger size if you’re above 30 of age or have given birth vaginally. I have passed that age with some margin and am still using the smaller size without leakage, which tells me that the bigger one would be uncomfortable for me. There are of course natural differences between all of us in size but there’s also the matter of muscular fitness in your pelvis area. If you’ve done your Kegel exercises (which I suggest you should, in order to be as fit as possible for various sexual magick workings) then you should probably go for the smaller one even if you’re older than 30. Note that the length and width varies with the different brands so that what will be small on one brand might be almost large at another. Have a look around before buying, change size and/or brand if you’re not happy with the fit until you’ve found the perfect cup for you. Then you can collect the elixir in a cup that’s truly made for it!